Desire
by Gimme Mocha
Summary: In the aftermath of the Blight, the last of the Ferelden Grey Wardens has vanished, turning her back on the country that calls her a hero. If they knew how much she hated them, they would never call for her to return.


(Story background: I know the canon story. The Grey Warden you play in DA:O dies, Alistair is king. But in my first playthrough, I played an Elven mage who romanced and was romanced, albeit clumsily, by Alistair. The ending blew my mind. I fully expected my character to die, and when Alistair sacrificed himself to save my character, I couldn't believe it. I replayed it over and over, trying to force a different ending, but it never happened. She could have taken Morrigan's bargain, but hell no. Neria would never, ever have given Morrigan a child with that much power, especially knowing by then what she did of how Flemeth's soul transference worked. So in the end, I had to accept it: Alistair was dead. Neria was alive. I gave up and played through the rest of the game, ending it with a heartbroken Neria despising the people of Ferelden for calling her a hero, and planning to sail off with Sten. However inadvisable a trip to the Qunari homeland might be for a mage. But the story wouldn't let go of me, and as I always do when a story ends unsatisfactorily, I've found myself writing fanfic. This, then, is just a bit more about Neria and my own personal Dragon Age canon.)

Neria, elf, mage of the Circle, Grey Warden, and Hero of Ferelden, fought a battle with the snarls in her hair and lost. With a sigh and a curse, she let her hands drop away from the strands, leaving them to fall over the upswept points of her ears.

The man next to her chuckled and levered himself up on one elbow. "You know, if I spoke elvish, I think I'd be shocked."

Her lips curved upward and she slanted a long-lidded glance at him. "It wasn't elvish, Alistair, it was Tivinter," she said.

"Then I'd probably be even more shocked." His fingers took over where hers had left off, gently plucking strands free and smoothing them with easy patience. The callouses on his hands from sword and shield snagged from time to time, but she didn't protest. "Your hair is so long," he murmured, lifting the newly sleek strands to his lips.

"That's why I wore it up when we traveled before. The Blight is no time to be caught with one's hair down."

"Did you just make a joke?"

"I do that sometimes."

"Yes, but that's my thing. Your thing is elvish poise and magic. You do your thing, and stop taking mine." His fingertips tweaked the tip of one of her ears and she wrinkled her nose at him, earning her a grin. "How long does it take you to braid all this? It must be hours."

"Sometimes," she said, eyes closing as he continued to stroke his fingers through her hair, the silken ends pooling on the bedrolls under them. "That's why I used to double it. Two braids, two twists into buns. I only ever need undo one at a time, if I needed clean it."

"I never told you, but the first time I met you I thought, "That's the same way Anora wears her hair!""

"That's what you thought? Not very romantic."

"Well, I also thought you were incredibly beautiful. But even as clueless as I was, I knew better than to say to a pretty woman, 'You look like my half-brother's wife.'"

She laughed. "I'd have found it charming."

"Yes, thank the Maker you think clumsy men who stumble over their words are charming or I'd never have stood a chance."

With a sigh, she leaned against his bare chest. "You rarely stumbled over your words," she said. "And you always made me laugh. You made it so easy to. I never laughed much in the Tower."

"Oh, I can't believe that. All those mages and Templars glaring at each other over supper? Living under a constant threat of death? Hilarity at every turn, I'm sure."

"I think I fell a little bit in love with you the first time I saw you," she continued. "You were annoying some mage, remember? You said you had been planning to name your child after him. 'The grumpy one,' you said.'"

He smiled at her chuckle. "I suppose I should remember, but honestly all I was thinking of was how best to impress you. Glad to know that did the trick."

His rough hands slid down her arms, and she relaxed deeper into the warmth of his body, reveling in the steady, strong sound of his heartbeat under her ear. Outside, the sounds of the camp carried clearly, unmuffled by the thin stretch of canvas tent between. "Leiliana's still working on that new melody," she commented.

"Don't tell her, but I like Oghren's lyrics better than hers."

"I think Sten's contemplating moving his patrol farther out, just to avoid them both." Her brow furrowed a little. "We've been traveling a while now," she said.

"Are you sorry?" He kissed the soft skin of her shoulder. "I thought you wanted to go with me to Highever."

"I did," she said. "I do. Duncan deserves his memorial. It's just…" She shook her head. "Never mind. For a moment, I couldn't remember how long we've been on the road to Highever."

He went still. "Just for a moment? And now?"

"And now, it doesn't matter."

"I don't think it does either."

He tugged on her shoulders. Obedient enough for the moment, she turned toward him and angled her head up to get a proper kiss. He knotted his hands in her hair, then relaxed his grip.

"I like your hair down," he said softly.

She smiled at him. "Then I'll wear it down for a little while longer."

"Just a little while?"

"Yes," she said, an odd note of wistful yearning creeping into her tone. "Just a little while longer."

His dark eyes focused on her blue ones, brows pulling down. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"As well as I can be, I suppose."

"This is my fault," he said, kissing her forehead. "I shouldn't have mentioned Duncan. Is that what's made you sad?"

"Not entirely."

"Thinking about Riordan, then? Love, he wanted to be the one to deliver the blow. We shouldn't begrudge him that. Are you sorry we didn't go to Weishaupt with the other Wardens accompanying his body?"

"No," she said, reaching up slender fingers to his lips, silencing his words. "No, none of that. It's just such a perfect night. I wish it didn't have to end."

His worry cleared into another one of his frequent smiles. "Maybe it won't," he said, dipping his head to kiss her again.

She closed her eyes and let the kiss go on. His hands knew just how to touch her, his muscles were strong and supple under her fingertips, his skin so warm…

"Hey," he said softly, pulling away to touch smaller kisses to the tears at the corners of her eyes. "No more of that, now."

"No, I suppose not," she sighed. "No more of any of this."

He took her head between his hands and lightly shook her until she opened her eyes, he made her face the love and concern in his expression. "What is going on in that elven head of yours?"

"You've been so marvelous," she said, eyes tracing the lines of his face. "I suppose I should hate you, despise you, but all I can feel is gratitude."

"Despise me? Gratitude? For what?"

"For giving me this night with him. When he died…" She trailed off, the present vanishing in a haze of memory. Of shouts and screams, of the rotten reek of bowel and burn and copper of death, of the sound of armor clattering against stone. "When he died, it was to save me. I'd have done the same for him, but I was exhausted and he moved too quickly. And then it was over. No last kiss, no last embrace. Just death."

"Love—"

"Don't."

He went still, then sighed and released her, sitting back on his heels. "All right. How long have you known?"

One corner of her mouth lifted, a sad shadow of her former smiles. "From the first, I suspect. I just didn't want to admit it to myself yet."

"Then why admit it now? There's no reason this night has to end. Ever."

She laughed a little, a chuff of sound. "Oh, and wouldn't Alistair go completely insane in his grave over that?" she asked, sitting back as well, looking at the perfect image of him in front of her. "The former templar's beloved mage, seduced by a demon? Gone abomination? He'd come back from the dead just to yell at me."

"Not all mages who host Fade spirits are abominations, you know," 'Alistair' said. "Look at Wynne. She was all right… when she wasn't trying to embarrass me."

"I hardly think you're a benevolent spirit," Neria said. "Not with this level of deception." She sighed again. "Wonderful though it is. You know, I always wondered how people let themselves be fooled by demons. I suppose now I know."

Still wearing Alistair's face, its expression of abashed humor was all too familiar, all too dear. "Yes, well, it's what we do. Some of us. Find your deepest desires and all that." It watched as she pulled her robe on and swept her hair free from the collar. "So what now?"

"I should kill you," she said.

"I'm going to hope there's a 'but' at the end of that."

Even now, it still spoke like him, and her heart twisted over itself. "But I don't want to. I will, if I must, slay his likeness. But I don't want to."

"And you won't stay."

"No, I won't do that, either. In the end, no matter how well you weave, that final moment… It's branded across my memory. The explosion, watching him fall, feeling his skin go from warm to cool…" She blinked away a fresh spate of tears. "There is no spell, no enchantment, no curse or demon's power that can alter the moment a heart breaks."

It was silent for a moment, though she doubted it was out of respect for her pain. "Then I ask again: what now?"

"Now," she said, wrestling her emotions back, "now I suppose we go our separate ways. You go back into the Fade, and I wake up."

"And if I don't want to let you go?"

"Then I'll kill you," she said simply. "You must know I can. I've killed so many of your kind. Consider it a gift, allowing you to live. For this night you gave me. For the gift of even this hollow memory. For giving me a chance to be with him again, I let you live."

"I didn't think I could keep you," it confessed. Dressed now and all at once in the Warden's armor he'd worn since they found it in Warden's Keep, the demon wearing Alistair's form rose to his feet. "But I had to try."

She nodded, and didn't look up. She couldn't watch him leave. "Don't try again," she said.

There was a rustle as the tent flap opened, admitting the night air and a wash of smoke from the bonfire. The smoke stung her eyes, and tears ran freely down her cheeks. A stray ember blew in on the same breeze and landed on the notch at her collarbone. She tried to lift a hand to the pain but couldn't.

Only then and finally did she part the veil, separate herself from the Fade, and return to her body. There was no fire, no camp, no lilting melody. Only heartache that never faded, and the tip of Sten's sword drawing blood from her neck.

Neria blinked away tears that had carried over from Fade to reality and looked up at the impassive gray face of the Qunari warrior.

He looked back, measuring, studying, deciding.

She waited for him to choose if she lived or died.

"Kadan," he said finally, pulling his sword away. "You would not wake."

"I didn't want to," she said, not yet sitting up.

"You were in the Fade." His disapproval was evident, as if his words were laced with bitter bile.

"Yes."

"A demon."

"Yes."

"What did it offer you?"

"Alistair."

He was silent, stepping away from her bedside. She sat up, abandoning the last remnant of the vision in the Fade. "I turned it down," she said.

"If you had not, you would not still be alive."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."

Neria rose from the bed, trailing a long braid of night-black hair behind her. Sten didn't leave, which was the only way she knew the conversation wasn't over. If it had even begun. There was no point in rushing him, or trying to determine what it was he wanted to say. When he was ready, he would say it and she would answer him. That simple, basic honesty between them had been the firm footing for their friendship, such as it was, and it was what made Sten one of the only people she could tolerate being around. He alone of all her companions made no excuses for her. He never considered her a hero, never encouraged her to be glad she was alive.

Alistair died killing the Archdemon. She had lived. Two facts, with no judgement upon either. Just truth.

"You should return to Ferelden," he said finally.

"I will not," she replied, sitting at the small vanity table and looking at her pale reflection.

"Your people need you."

"They do not."

"War comes again. You know this. The March, the mages, the Qunari. Why do you ignore what you know is true?"

"I do not ignore it," she said, hands folded in her lap. "I simply do not care."

"I thought you had survived the war with the Archdemon," Sten said after a heartbeat of silence. "I was wrong."

Her head snapped toward him, delicate chin touching bare white shoulder. Her eyes narrowed, warning him silently that the ground he walked upon was treacherous.

As ever, Sten cared nothing for her warnings. "I do not understand it," he said, "but you are a warrior. You fight. You do not sit and weave hair and think about the past. Your country burns."

"Then let it burn!" she snarled. "Let them all burn, as he burned. Let them die and rot in their beds, food for maggots. If they must be grateful to me, let them be grateful that I have not wiped them out, scorched their miserable greasy bodies from existence for cheering for me. They called me a hero Sten, for simply surviving, for standing by while he died! Every time they cheered for me, I heard only them applauding his death. I would have killed them all in that first disgusting parody of a parade had it not been for his memory staying my hand!"

Beside her, the mirror on the vanity cracked and shattered as her anger shook the air around her without her conscious control.

Sten didn't move, her words bouncing off his skin as if she had flung scented rose petals at him instead of vitriol and hate. Under his silent regard, her skin took on a pink stain spreading from her cheeks outward. At last she was forced to look down at the floor.

"Perhaps you are correct," he said. "Perhaps you should have died to the Archdemon. There is no doubt that if you had, Alistair would have grieved, but he at least would also have done his duty to his country and not have turned his back on it."

He did not walk away as a human or even an elf might have. Instead he stood there still, strong with his convictions, resolute, and yes, damn him, right.

Two more tears fell, spattering on the stone at her feet. She was so tired of crying. "I hurt," she whispered.

"That does not matter."

"I grieve."

"Nonetheless."

"I want to die."

"Then die in battle."

"I miss him."

Silence. His hand touched her shoulder briefly. "I know."

Then he was gone.

Neria, elf, mage of the Circle, Grey Warden, and Hero of Ferelden, looked at her shattered reflection. It was time to go home.


End file.
